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76 sats \ 8 replies \ @unschooled OP 16h \ parent \ on: my problem with zaps the_stacker_muse
selfishness.
Everything everyone does is inherently selfish because it's based on their individual value systems and preferences.
The point of the rewards is to incentivize higher quality engagement than exists on any other platform. To my knowledge, this seems to be working.
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Everything everyone does is inherently selfish because it's based on their individual value systems and preferences.
agreed, but we naturally modulate because pure selfishness looks hideous. we teach children that "sharing is caring" because we see in them reflections of ourselves.
my discussion was only incidentally about the rewards system on sn. im more interested in the behaviours promoted by online platforms generally.
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I think monetary incentives is the wrong place to draw the line.
Every platform uses a variety of incentives to try to achieve their objectives. The quality of an online community speaks to the quality of the incentive scheme they've employed.
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i like zaps, i like the rewards, and i like the community these attract, and i think we owe these things working to monetary incentives. i have said nothing to the contrary.
when someone is rewarded for doing what they think others will do (in this case, zapping top posts and comments) then my question is, doesnt this lead to conformity?
even your challenging comments force me to articulate in new ways, which makes me better and hopefully clarifies my thinking to you. if you just zapped and agreed, we would have gotten none of that, and still you would have earned rewards because now the post is 'hot.'
my thinking is, how can sn encourage more of this?
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As I've written about before, SN is a Keynesian Beauty Contest. As such, it has well known incentive problems, exactly as you're pointing out.
You're exactly right to look for remedies to these.
The problem is that we have no other metric of post quality than what stackers indicate are quality posts.
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i wasnt aware of the term, but that's exactly it.
It may feel redundant for some but i feel it's a conversation worth returning to.
TBH, I don't think we really need to overthink about the metric of post quality, what's why been zapped, why this or why that on SN. We need to, if stress on anything, is make this platform as much enjoyable as possible while learning and promoting the v4v at the core.
I accept when I was new here, I used to overthink a lot about this or that on SN. But now I just enjoy it. I don't care whats and whys. And this transformation is much more satisfactory because it makes me feel at home rather something is imposed.
No matter what you and I think of rewards or zapping behaviour among Stackers, SN will grow exponentially only when it's more acceptable and enjoying.